The Prime Minister advocates a double citizenship

According to the opinion of Saulius Skvernelis citizens cannot be divided into reliable ones and not so reliable ones, and that is why he claims that political parties have to evolve the compromise together concerning the issue of dual citizenship. Liberalisation of law might be done only by the referendum: the majority of citizens in Lithuania would have to agree on changing the appropriate record in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania.

“For instance: the division whether or not someone who left to Russia is worth to trust in and can be a citizen of Lithuania- it is a very delicate case. I think that we have to evolve the mechanism, how not to divide potential citizens into better and worse” – said Saulius Skvernelis during the meeting with the governmental opposition party Homeland Union- Lithuanian Christian Democrats.

According to the Prime Minister’s opinion all political powers should evolve common position in this case, otherwise “we will keep losing our citizens”.

Skvernelis thinks that referendum concerning validation of possibility of having the citizenship of two or even more countries in Lithuania would have to take place along with elections.

The second part of the article 12 of Lithuanian Constitution states that “apart from single predicted cases no one can be the citizen of the Republic of Lithuania and the citizen of a different country at one time”. Double citizenship might be obtained only by those persons who left Lithuania before year 1990 along with their offspring, and people who were granted the citizenship automatically that means by getting married with the citizen of a different country and by the heritage when at least one parent is a citizen of Lithuania. Also children of Lithuanian citizens who were born abroad might keep the citizenship.

Constitutional Court explained that liberalisation of law can be made only by the referendum: the majority of citizens of Lithuania would have to agree on a change of the appropriate record in the Republic of Lithuania Constitution.